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Mumbai blasts : Another face of Islamic terrorism

	September 01, 2003

Two powerful explosions, reminiscent of the 1993 serial blasts, ripped through South Mumbai’s prominent areas on August 25 afternoon killing nearly 50 persons and injuring over 160. The first of the two blasts, several kilometres apart, which shattered peace in the vibrant city, took place at 1.03 p.m. in the crowded Jhaveri Bazar, close to the temple of Mumbadevi, the city’s presiding deity. The second, four minutes later, occurred in a pay-and-park facility close to the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal Hotel.

The “primary suspect” is the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). According to the Mumbai police the choice of explosive indicated the hand of the LeT. It was yet another instance of Pakistan-sponsored terrorists hitting out at a metropolis to spread panic.Indian intelligence agencies had been getting tip-offs of attempts to disturb peace.

Four persons, masquerading as tourists going round the city, are believed to have been in the taxi that exploded between the Gateway of India and the Taj hotel.

RDX is unavailable in India, but was used in the serial blasts of March 12, 1993 in Mumbai. Since then the explosive has not been used in the city though it has been “used quite a bit” in attacks in Jammu and Kashmir where the LeT is very active.

The LeT is headquartered in Pakistan from where its northern India offensives are run. According to reports, its southern India offensives, which include Mumbai, are run from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

A module group of the LeT was known to have been active in Mumbai. The group’s southern India commander, Abu Sultan alias Faizal Khan, was shot dead in a police encounter on March 29, 2003 in the Mumbai suburb of Goregaon. Police do not discount the possibility that another module could have since been created and could be responsible for the Aug 25 blasts. Police said that local assistance from the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was still a high possibility.

Police do not rule out the involvement of the Jaish-e-Mohammed jehadi group. Another clue that the police are following is the possible involvement of a Bangladeshi national who is believed to be an operative of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence.



Advani blames Pakistan

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, who visited the Mumbai blast sites characterised the events as terrorist-related and demanded that Pakistan hand over the 20 proclaimed offenders, including those involved in the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, to prove its earnestness. The spread of the terrorist machine was not only in Jammu and Kashmir but “because of Jammu and Kashmir”, he said adding that “the neighbour’s anger was rooted also in the fact that it had made lesser progress.”

Advani said if Pakistan, despite this “hostility”, had condemned the blasts, “it was good”. However, he wondered if “it was credible”. Mumbai remembered “those who perpetrated a bigger tragedy” in 1993 and though the culprits were wanted by the courts and Interpol, they “were being patronised by Pakistan”.

Advani said Pakistan was keen on destabilising not only some Indian regions “but the entire country” and newer targets were being constantly picked up. Islamabad had changed its strategy since 1971 from waging a full-scale war, and targeted not only Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Delhi but “the whole of the country”. It was not only seeking to destabilise India economically but also destroy the country’s secular credentials. Now, Pakistan was continuing to “play its games” in this country. India would neutralise all attempts at destabilisation “and gain victory over terrorism”, he said.

Pakistan rejected to the charge levelled by Advani that it was harbouring terrorists wanted for acts of terrorism in India.



Terrorism in Mumbai : An analysis

If the Aug 25 twin blasts that claimed nearly 50 lives, exposed the vulnerability of the metropolis, it also showed the resilience of the people of the metro who took the taxi bomb explosions in their stride and came to work the next day, indicating little signs of nervousness. Fortunately, there was no communal tension and in fact, the neighbours from different communities came to the help of each other.

If the aim of the terrorist groups was to create panic and trigger tension, they miserably failed. The city rallied to its feet within 24 hours. So was the stock exchange, which came down on the day of the blasts and recovered smartly. Even as the politicians went about their usual blame game and the police and investigating agencies got busy finding out the source of the explosives and the men behind the diabolic operation.

The Zaveri Bazar and Gateway of India blasts that stopped Mumbai in its tracks on August 25 were the sixth and seventh attacks within nine months on the beleagured city. As the shock gradually wears off, an uneasy truth is beginning to dawn on Mumbaikars: that they haven’t seen the last of the terror agents yet. Knee-jerk reactions like asking for this or that politician’s resignation will not help. The people have decided to take a united stand and fortify the city themselves.

The strength of the city lies in the people’s attitude. Nothing can stop them in going about their business or earn their livelihood. Mumbai is particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks, given its teeming millions and the fact that hundreds of migrants continue to pour into the city every day. The city is conducive to terrorist activities on account of the anonymity it affords people, say police authorities.

Intelligence agencies are busy finding out the motives and why Mumbai was increasingly under attack from the terror bandwagon? While there is one theory that the attacks are linked to the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat last year, experts maintain that there is no evident link. Even the last blast in Ghatkopar on July 28, a month after the Best Bakery case judgment, was construed as a revenge attack, but intelligence sources pointed out that it was more likely linked to the arrest of SIMI activists in Padgha village near Thane earlier.

SIMI, the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India, is, according to the police, a key player in all the Mumbai blasts of the past year. Investigations after the two blasts in December 2002 put the police on the SIMI trail. Detention and questioning of a few suspects led the police to the conclusion that the conspiracy had been hatched by the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Acting on intelligence information, the police first gunned down three alleged LeT terrorists, including the southern commander, Abu Sultan, in an encounter on March 29. Diaries and other incriminating documents recovered from him led the police to Padgha-Borivli village in Thane, Aurangabad, Parbhani and Malegaon. The police arrested several SIMI activists, including prime suspects Saquib Nachen, Dr Abdul Mateen and Noor Sikander.

The police claim to have solved the blasts of December 2002 as well as the explosions in Vile Parle on January 27 and Mulund on March 13. But they are still to solve the last three blasts in Mumbai. The police suspect the role of a few other terrorist groups including the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Dukhtaran-e-Millat in the recent blasts.

The interrogation of hardcore SIMI activists Maroof and Mobeen - arrested in Agra in 2001 and recently released on bail - added important information to the data bank on the banned outfit. Tips provided by Mobeen, who was arrested in connection with a blast in Agra’s Sadar Bazar, have given the investigating agencies details of how SIMI activists are being trained at joint camps of the Hizbul, LeT and JeM in the Khaibar Pass area of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, according to intelligence sources in Lucknow. The new offshoot of JeM, Anjuman Khuddam-e-Islam, is believed to have trained the fresh batches of jehadis.

More important, SIMI seems to have revamped its cadres after the ban. The new offshoots have academicians, doctors, engineers, software experts in their rank and file. What is compounding the problem is the fact that the new entrants in the world of terror have no police records and involve women as cohorts.



The Gujarat angle

It was only when state Minister Haren Pandya was gunned down in Ahmedabad on March 26 this year, that the Gujarat police realised how deep-rooted were the seeds of revenge after the riots. Most of the accused belonged to the Sunni Bohra community of businessmen, which was badly affected in the riots, and are alleged to have trained in terror camps across the border. The finding shocked the police who had never imagined that English-speaking boys from well-to-do families could be so agitated.

Earlier, there were reports of Gujarati Muslim boys getting training with the LeT after being indoctrinated into jehad at a camp in Moradabad. Shahid Ahmed Bakshi, who was arrested with three LeT operatives in Delhi in August last year, was from Gujarat. He had lost a relative in the riots and had quit his driver’s job in Kuwait to seek revenge. The scouting was done at Gujarat’s biggest relief camp at Shah-e-Alam and another camp in Behrampura. Some 33 boys between 14-15 years were identified and taken to UP. Intelligence sources say the Ahle-Hadees, a fundamentalist Islamic group, has influenced a large section of Muslims in the border district of Kutch. “The atmosphere has certainly got vitiated since the riots,” remarks an official of the Anti-Terrorist Squad in Ahmedabad.



Gujarat temple attack : Plot hatched in Saudi Arabia

The Ahmedabad police arrested five persons last week and claimed to have solved the mystery behind the terrorist attack on the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar. They said the arrested had links with two Pakistan-based terrorist organisations. The Police have disclosed that the five persons who had been arrested had confessed to having provided the local logistic support to the entire operation planned in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and masterminded by two Jaish-e-Mohammad operatives in India.

The help of the ISI and a Pakistan-based terrorist outfit, Lashkar-e-Taiba, was also taken by the Jaish in carrying out the operation in Akshardham on September 24 last year, in which 46 people were killed before the terrorists, both from Pakistan, were gunned down. A third terrorist was believed to have escaped to Pakistan.

The Gujarat Government has invoked the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) against the five arrested. Though the Ahmedabad crime branch police claimed that the accused had confessed to their involvement in the Akshardham episode, police told the court that they needed to interrogate them longer to tie up some loose ends.

This will be the third case where POTA has been applied against the accused. A special court will hear the POTA cases. The Government had earlier applied POTA against all the 125 arrested in connection with the Godhra train carnage as well as all the 20 arrested in connection with the murder of the former Gujarat Home Minister, Haren Pandya.

According to police the sprawling Akshardham temple complex was selected as the “most suitable spot’’ to avenge the Muslim killings, out of some half-a-dozen crowded’ spots shown to the terrorists in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar including the two Hindu temples in Bhadra and Dudheshwar, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad office in Paldi, the Bharatiya Janata Party office in Khanpur, all in Ahmedabad, and the Assembly and Secretariat complex and Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar.

The two terrorists, Hafiz Yasir from Lahore and Mohammad Farookh from Rawalpindi, along with a third terrorist, Ayub Khan, also from Lahore, had come to Ahmedabad a week before the attack and were provided shelter in a house which belonged to the brother of one Adam Suleman Ajmeri who was living in Riyadh then.

The terrorists had apparently come “empty-handed” from Pakistan and were provided with arms and ammunitions in Ahmedabad. The arrested persons had also told police about the addresses of the shops in Ahmedabad from where dry fruits, clothing, carbon papers, shoes and other materials recovered on the body of the two killed terrorists were bought. He said two Jaish operatives, Abu Tallah and Abu Sufiyan, whose jurisdiction was entire India other than Jammu and Kashmir for subversive activities, had convened a secret meeting in Riyadh immediately after the post-Godhra violence in the State with the help of one Salim Hanif Sheikh, who hails from the Dariapur locality in Ahmedabad but was working as a tailor in Riyadh for the last few years.

The Jaish operatives also held several meetings with them in Hyderabad and in Ahmedabad for finalising the entire operation. The locals were told that the entire operation would be carried out by the terrorists coming from Pakistan and that they would only have to provide logistic support to carry it out.



Explosives seized in Delhi

The Delhi Police vigil following a tip-of that there could be a plot to set off explosives in the busy Connaught Place area, paid off with the seizure of a huge quantity of gelatine sticks in New Delhi railway station. According to the police, 184 gelatine sticks weighing over 20 kg were recovered from the platform number 6 and 7 of the Station.

Meanwhile, in another related incident, the police intercepted a suspicious looking man from the Nizamuddin Railway Station and recovered over Rs 77 lakh in cash from his possession.

The New Delhi district had been put on a high security alert after they received a specific tip-off that terrorists will strike the Connaught Place any time on Aug 30.

Late at night on Aug 30, two terrorists, belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammed and were identified as Zahoor Abbas of Pakistan and Habibullah — were killed in Indraprastha Park near Nizamuddin Bridge. An AK-56 rifle, two magazines with 30 rounds each, a loaded Chinese pistol and Rs 200,000 were seized, police said, adding they were travelling in a Maruti car.